The Woman Who Married a Cloud: The Collected Short Stories (15 page)

In the picture, besides the moustache, he was wearing one of those typically silly “Heavy Metal” fan T-shirts (covered with flames and lightning) announcing a group called “BrainDead”. What was ominous about that was that Adam had recently brought home an album
by
BrainDead, saying they were “awesome”.

“My name is Thursday, Frau Becker—”

“Today is Thursday.”

“That’s right. If we’d met yesterday, I’d be Wednesday—”

“Who are you? What are these pictures?”

“They’re your future. Or rather, one of them. Futures are unstable, tricky things. They depend on different factors.

“The way you’re going now, the way you handle your life and those around you, this is what will happen.” He pointed to the picture I held and then opened both hands in a gesture that said, “What can you do? That’s the way it is.”

“I don’t believe it. Get away from me!” I moved to turn, but he touched my shoulder.

“Your favourite smell is burning wood. You always lie when you say the first person you ever slept with was Joe Newman. The first was really your parents’ handyman, Leon Bell.”

No
one knew that. Not my husband, my sister,
no
one. Leon Bell! I thought of him so rarely. He was kind and gentle but it still hurt and I was so scared someone would come home and find us in my bed.

“What do you want?”

He took the photograph out of my hand and put it back on the table with the others.

“Futures can change. They’re like the lines on our hands. Fate is a negotiable thing. I’m here to negotiate.”

“What do I have that you want?”

“Your talent. Remember the drawing you did the other night of the child standing under the tree? I want it. Bring me that picture and your son’ll be saved.”

“
That
? It was only a sketch! It took ten minutes. I did it while watching television!”

“Bring it to me here tomorrow at exactly this time.”

“How can I believe you?”

He picked up a photograph that had been covered by the others. He held it up. My old bedroom. Leon Bell and me.

“I don’t even know you. Why are you doing this to me?”

He slid the pictures together as if they were cards he was about to shuffle. “Go home and find that drawing.”

I was pretty good once. Went to art school on a full scholarship and some of my teachers said I had the makings of a real painter. But you know how I reacted to that? Got scared. I painted because I liked it. When people started looking carefully at my work and got out their cheque books, I ran away and got married. Because marriage (and its responsibilities) is a perfect rock to hide behind when an enemy (parents, maturity, success) is out gunning for you. Squeeze down into a ball behind it and virtually nothing can touch you. For me, being happy didn’t mean being a successful artist. I saw success as stress and demands I’d never be able to fulfill, thus disappointing people who thought I was better than I really was.

Just recently, now that the children are old enough to get their own snacks, I bought some expensive English oil-paints and two stretched canvases. But I’ve been almost too embarrassed to use them because the only “art” I’ve done in the last years has been funny sketches for the kids or a little scribble at the bottom of a letter to a good friend.

Plus the sketchbook, my oldest friend. I’d always wanted to keep a diary but never had the kind of persistence that’s needed to say something in writing about every day you live. My sketchbook is different because the day I began it, when I was seventeen, I promised myself to make drawings in there only when I wanted, or when an event was so important (the birth of the kids, the day I discovered Willy was having an affair) that I
had
to “say” something about it. As an old woman I’d give it to my children and say, “These are things you didn’t know. They aren’t important now except to tell you more about me, if that interests you.” Or maybe I’d only look at it then, sigh, and throw it away.

I go through the book sometimes, but it generally depresses me; even the good parts, the nice memories. Because there is so much sadness in the details: how current and glamorous I thought I was, wearing striped bell-bottom pants to a big party just after we were first married. Or one of Willy at his desk, smoking a cigar, so happy to be finishing the article on Fischer von Erlach which he thought would make his career but which was never even published.

I drew these things carefully and in great detail, but all I see now are the silly pants, or the spread of his excited fingers on the typewriter keyboard.

But then if it depresses me, why do I continue drawing in the book? Because it is the only life I have and I’m not pretentious enough to think I know answers now that might come to me when I’m older. I keep hoping thirty or forty years from now, when I look at those drawings, I’ll have some kind of revelation that will make parts of my life clearer to me.

I couldn’t find the drawing Thursday wanted. I went through everything: desk drawers, wastepaper baskets, the kids’ old homework papers. How brutally panic builds when you can’t find something necessary! Whatever you’re looking for becomes the most important object in the world, however trivial—a suitcase key, a year-old receipt from the gas company. Your apartment becomes an enemy, hiding the thing it knows you need, indifferent to your pleas.

It wasn’t in my sketchbook, on the telephone table, stuck in a coat pocket. Neither the grey prairies under the beds nor the false pine and chemical smells in the kitchen closet offered anything. Would my son really lose his
eye
if I couldn’t find one stupid little drawing? Yes, that’s what the old man said. I believed him after seeing the picture of Leon and me together.

It was a terrible night, trying to be good old normal “Mom” to the family, while madly exploring every corner of our place for the picture. At dinner, I casually asked if anyone had seen it in their travels. No one had. They were used to my drawings and doodles around the house. Now and then someone liked one and took it to their room, but no luck with this one.

Throughout the evening I kept glancing at Adam, which gave me further reason to search. He had plain eyes but they were smart and welcoming. He looked straight at you in a conversation; gave you his full attention.

At midnight there were no further places to look. The drawing was gone. Sitting at the kitchen table with a glass of orange juice, I knew there were only two things I could do when I met Thursday at the Bremen the next afternoon: tell the truth, or try and recreate from memory the drawing he demanded. It was such a simple sketch that I didn’t think there would be much trouble drawing something that looked similar, but
exactly
the same? Not possible.

I went into the living room and got my clipboard. At least the paper would be the same. Willy bought the stuff by the ream because it was cheap and sturdy and we both liked using it. You didn’t feel guilty crumpling a piece if you’d made a mistake. I could easily see myself crumpling up that damned drawing and not thinking about it again.

A child standing under a tree. A little girl in jeans. A chestnut tree. Nothing else. What was special about it?

It took five minutes to do, five minutes to be sure it was as I remembered, five more minutes with it in my lap, knowing it was hopeless. Fifteen minutes from start to finish.

The next afternoon, before I’d even sat down, Thursday was tapping an insistent finger on the marble table. “Did you find it? Do you have it?”

“Yes. It’s in my bag.”

Everything about him relaxed. His face went slack, the finger lay down with the rest of his palm on the table, he leaned back against the velvet seat. “Great. Give it to me, please.”

He was feeling better, but I wasn’t. As coolly as possible, I pulled the wrinkled piece of paper out of my purse.

Before leaving the apartment I’d crumpled up the drawing into a tight ball to perhaps fool him a little. If he didn’t look too closely maybe I’d be safe. Maybe I wouldn’t. There wasn’t much chance of being lucky, but at that point what else could I hope for?

Yet watching how carefully he flattened out the paper and pored over it as if it were some unique and priceless document, I knew he’d notice the difference any moment and everything would go to hell from there. I took off my coat and slid into the booth.

He looked up from the picture. “You can hum if you’d like. I’ll just be a minute.”

I liked this café so much, but today it had been changed by this man into an unpleasant, menacing place where all I wanted to do was finish our business and leave. Even the sight of Herr Ritter standing at the counter reading the newspaper was disturbing. How could life go on so normally when the worst kind of magic was in the air, thick as cigar smoke?

“You have a good memory.”

“What do you mean?”

He reached into his breast pocket and took out a piece of paper. Unfolding it, he held up my original drawing of the little girl under the tree.

“
You
had it!”

He nodded. “Both of us played tricks. I said you had it, you were trying to give me a copy and saying it was the original. Who was more dishonest?”

“But I couldn’t find it because you had it! Why did you do that?”

“Because we had to see how well you can remember things. It’s very important.”

“What about my son? Will he be all right?”

“I guarantee it. I can show you a photograph of him then, but it might be better just knowing he’ll be fine and will live a very contented life. Because of what
you
did for him here.” He pointed to my second drawing. “Do you want to see the photograph of him?”

I was tempted, but finally said no. “Just tell me if he’ll be a pilot.”

Thursday crossed his arms. “He’ll be captain of a Concorde flying the Paris-to-Caracas route. One day his plane will be hijacked, but your son Adam will do something so clever and courageous that he will single-handedly save the plane and the passengers. A genuinely heroic act. There’ll even be a cover story about him in
Time
magazine entitled, ‘Maybe There Are Still Heroes’.”

“My son?”

He held up the drawing. “Your son. Because of this.”

“What about Willy and I getting divorced?”

“Do you really want to know?”

“Yes, I do.”

He took another piece of folded paper out of his pocket, along with the stub of a short pencil. “Draw a pear.”

“A pear?”

“Yes. Draw a picture of a pear and then I will tell you.”

I took the pencil and smoothed the paper on the table. “I don’t understand any of this, Mr Thursday.”

A pear. A fat bottom and a half-so-fat top. A stem. A little crosshatching to give it shadow and depth. One pear.

I handed it to him and he barely gave it a glance before folding it and putting it in another pocket.

“There will be a divorce because you will leave your husband, Frau Becker, not vice-versa, as you fear.”

“Why would I do that?”

“Because Frank Elkin is coming for you.”

I think if I had married Frank Elkin I would have been all right. I certainly loved him enough. But besides loving me too, he also loved parachuting. One day he jumped, pulled his rip-cord, but nothing happened. How long ago was that, twenty years? Twenty-four?

“Frank Elkin is dead.”

“He is, but he won’t be. You can change that too.”

The apartment was empty when we got back. Thursday said he would keep it empty until we were finished with what we had to do.

In the bedroom, I took my sketchbook out of the table beside the bed. That familiar grey and red cover. I remembered the day I bought it and paid for it with new coins. Somehow, every coin I handed the salesgirl was gleaming like new gold and silver. I was romantic enough then to take that as a good omen.

In the living room, I handed my book to Mr Thursday, who took it without comment.

“Sit down.”

“But what will happen to my children if I divorce?”

“If you want, the court will award them to you. You can prove your husband is an alcoholic and incapable of caring for them.”

“But Willy doesn’t drink!”

“You can change that.”

“How? How can I change all these things? You keep saying that, but what do you mean?”

He opened my sketchbook and whipped quickly through it, not stopping or slowing anywhere. When he’d finished, he looked at me. “Somewhere in this book you’ve drawn several pictures of God, Frau Becker. I can’t tell you which ones they are, but they
are
here. Some people have this talent. Some have been able to write God, others can compose Him in music. I’m not talking about people like Tolstoy or Beethoven, either. They were only great artists.

“You know the sadness of detail, using your phrase. That is what makes you capable of transcendence.

“For the rest of your life, if you choose, I will come sometimes and ask you to do a drawing. Like the pear today. I’ll ask for things like that, as well as copies of certain of the work in your sketchbook. I
can
say that your book is full of astounding work. There are at least three different, important drawings of God; one
I’ve
never even seen. Other things, too. We need this book and we need you, but unfortunately I cannot tell you more than that. Even if I were to show you which of your work is ... divine, you wouldn’t understand what I was talking about.

“You can do things we can’t and vice-versa. For us, bringing Frank Elkin back from the dead is no problem. Or saving your son.” He held up my book with both hands. “But we are incapable of doing this. That is why we need you.”

“What if I were to say no?”

“We keep our word. Your son will still become a pilot, but you will sink deeper into your meagre life until you realize even more than now that you’ve been suffocating in it for years.”

“And if I give you my book and do your drawings?”

“You can have Frank Elkin and whatever else you want.”

“Are you from heaven?”

Mr Thursday smiled for the first time. “I can’t honestly say, because I don’t know. That is why we need your drawings, Mrs Becker. Because even God doesn’t know or remember any more. It is as if He has a kind of progressive amnesia. To put it simply, He forgets things. The only way we can get Him to remember is to show Him pictures like yours of Himself. Or play certain music, read passages from books ... Only then does He remember and tell us the things we need to know. We are recording everything He says, but there are fewer and fewer periods of clarity. His mind loses its footing more and more as time goes on.